British Romantic Drama and the Politics of the Public Theater

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

"Dramatic genius... is kindling over the whole land." (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine review; 1823) This class approaches British Romanticism through the spectacular fecundity of its staged drama, which is not usually considered in conventional assessments of the period. Alongside serious, often disturbing new tragedies, hilarious new comedies, and stunning revivals of Shakespeare, Romantic theater offered frenetic audiences a staggering range of experimental or fringe genres such as melodrama, Gothic drama, nautical drama, pantomime, and quadruped entertainments featuring live horses in cavalry charges and the herics of "Carlo the Wonder Dog" and "Jocko the Brazilian Monkey." We will explore the ingenious ways, both in print and on stage, playwrights utilized these and other stage practices to engage with the burning political issues of the time: the French Revolution, slavery, imperial might and global strife, women's rights, among others. Readings address major canonical figures-- Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron—as well as less well-known figures who ruled the stage, such as Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Inchbald, "Monk" Lewis, and Hannah Cowley.